John Sewell’s
first foray into the mysteries of land use planning began in 1966
in the Trefann Court Urban Renewal Area in downtown
Toronto, where he worked with local residents and businessmen to
oppose a city-sponsored scheme to clear the area and replace it
with new public housing and an industrial park. He helped develop
the
radical idea that neighbourhoods should be preserved and that the
best renewal for a neighbourhood was addressing its problems rather
than wiping it out and starting over again.

Two ideas emerged from
the work in Trefann Court that later proved popular throughout
the city: neighbourhoods should be protected
and preserved; and planning should be done in conjunction with
local
residents. The way these ideas developed is described in Sewell’s
book Up Against City Hall (1972), particularly Chapter 2, and
in Graham Fraser’s book on the Trefann Court experience,
Fighting Back (1974).

Once elected to Toronto City Council in
1969, John broadened
his ideas on land-use planning. He became active in the nascent
attempts
to protect historic buildings in the city and published the booklet “A
Sense of Time and Place” with a foreword by Robert Fulford.
The booklet described in words and photographs two dozen structures
that were threatened with demolition, including the South St.
Lawrence Market (to be demolished for a parking garage) which
was ultimately
saved after a vigorous citizen-led campaign. He introduced various
measures to control the height and size of structures in the
downtown and these played a role in the creation of the Central
Area Plan
for Toronto in 1974.

The Central Area Plan included a number
of new planning principles for Toronto including the ideas that:
the downtown should be
a mix of housing and commercial uses; affordable housing should
be
built
in the downtown; new development should strengthen streetscapes
rather than weaken them; historic buildings should be preserved;
and new
roadways into the downtown should not be built but instead growth
in the downtown should be related directly to the capacity of
the transit system. The CAP is described in more detail in Sewell’s
book The Shape of the City (1993), particularly in chapter 5.

As
an alderman John fought almost single-handedly against the proposals
to create the large shopping complex knows as Eaton
Centre, and
that opposition led to many changes that ultimately improved
that proposal,
although never enough to satisfy his objections.
John was involved in the formative discussions to create a new
neighbourhood downtown, the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, and was
heavily involved
in voicing the basic planning principles underlying this development
including: mixed uses; a grid street pattern; building forms
that reflected the existing city; and so forth. This is described
in
more detail in Chapter 6 of The Shape of the City.
He was leader in opposing the expansion of high-rise development
into neighbourhoods, particularly the struggle in the area south
of St. Jamestown, the beginning of which is described in Chapter
8 of Up Against City Hall, and the latter stages in Chapters
3 and 4 of The Shape of the City.

In 1986 John was appointed Chair
of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority and he led three different
initiatives to show how
public housing
sites could be redeveloped. MTHA owned some of the most notorious
housing projects in Toronto, including those in Jane-Finch and
Regent Park. The redevelopment proposals indicated how public
streets could
be introduced into those areas, and a mixture of affordable and
market housing created, as well as non-residential uses. These
proposals
are described in The Shape of the City, chapter 8.

In 1991 John
was appointed by the provincial government as Chair of the Commission
on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario.
The Commission used an innovative consultative process to create
proposals for public discussion. That process is described
in the introductory chapter of the Commission’s report New
Planning for Ontario, published by the Government of Ontario
in 1993. The
meat of the commission’s report was the recommendation
that the provincial government should adopt strong land-use
planning policies
that would govern all those in the province making land-use
decisions – municipalities,
provincial ministries, the Ontario Municipal Board, and so
forth.

The policies proposed by the Commission included: the
protection and enhancement of significant natural features;
prohibiting
sprawling development; the introduction of affordable housing
into all new
development; the protection of quality agricultural areas;
and the pursuit of energy and water conservation. The report
also
proposed a number of changes to the structures in which planning
decisions
were made to make them more open, accessible and accountable.
The Commission’s report was released in 1993, and in
the following two years the provincial government enacted most
of the Commission’s
recommendations, including a great many of the planning policy
proposals. But in late 1995 the newly elected Conservative
government of Mike
Harris dismantled most of the changes and returned planning
to a laissez-faire regime that became a playground for developers
advocating
sprawling subdivisions.

During the 1990s John worked with a
number of consultants including John Van Nostrand Associates
and Baird/Sampson Architects to
produce “A
Plan for Seaton”. This document described how a new city
of 90,000 could be built on about 4,000 acres of land in an
environmentally
and economically self-sustaining manner. The report was prepared
pursuant to a provincial government competition which the team
managed to win, but the government took no action to develop
these lands,
located east of Toronto in North Pickering. John’s specific
focus in this report was in respect to the creation of employment
strategies to ensure that the new community would not be a
bedroom community but would create enough jobs for those living
there so
that commuting would not be necessary.

In the mid-1990s John
began working with Regent Park residents to create a viable
plan to redevelop a corner of this large
public housing
project. Governments showed extraordinary reluctance to improve
this community, although in 2002 the Toronto Community Housing
Company
produced a plan redeveloping all 69 acres of Regent Park North
and South by introducing public streets, replacing the affordable
units,
and building a considerable number of market units. John has
been a critic of this plan since it does not increase the amount
of
affordable housing; and it does not offer low income people
ownership options.
This is further described in the section of the web site entitled
`Current political initiatives.’

In 1999 John wrote a
booklet “Redeveloping Public Housing Projects”,
published by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. Much of
this booklet is based on the experience in Regent Park.

In 2002 John began working
with tenants in the Don Mount Court public housing project, to help
them create a plan for redevelopment. He has been a strong critic
of the Toronto Community Housing Company, its plan for redevelopment
and its delay in proceeding. This is further described in `Current
Political initiatives.’

John
has continued his interest in finding ways to reduce sprawl, which
continues apace around Canadian cities. In September
2003 he addressed the International Joint Commission on the
Great
Lakes, arguing that land use planning strategies have failed
to control
sprawl, and it is time to pass general legislation prohibiting
any
further low-density single-use developments. See `Recent
speeches and articles of note.’ As well, he participated
with David Suzuki in the launch of the report on sprawl prepared
by David Gurin
for the David Suzuki Foundation, `Driven to Action.’ The
report can be found at www.davidsuzuki.org.